03/02/07 A year without workers

Immigration Reform. Every farm producer in the country is ready to have it behind them and get things back to at least some sort of normalcy. But it looks like 2007 won't be the year. After the harvest of 2006 where producers struggled to get enough labor to bring the crop in, 2007 looks the same. Congressman Doc Hastings has been telling producers to plan for another tight year. HASTINGS: My expectation is that we will get a bill but I don't believe we will get a bill in time to effect the harvest season of this year. In fact I have been telling those that have been coming into my office, I met with the Farm Bureau for example earlier this week, to say that if they have tree fruit, plan exactly as they did last year which is obviously a very difficult environment but I just don't think we'll get anything passed in time to effect this years' harvest. So where are we on getting this issue settled? HASTINGS: There's been no movement in the house other than now there's talk that the Senate will be moving their version of the bill before the House does. That's somewhat significant because in the last Congress the House passed their version that I didn't support that was border security only and the Senate passed their version which frankly was so broad it simply didn't have any strong support at all. My understanding is that the Senate will redo their effort but it will be much narrower in scope. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.